Ebola prompts DR Congo-Cameroon venue change bid

Cameroon are the latest team in African Cup soccer qualifying to express fears over Ebola and request a venue change for a game, this time over another outbreak of the deadly virus in Congo.

Cameroon's request relates to their September 6 qualifier in the huge central African country, where 13 people have died in a new outbreak which experts say is unrelated to the one in West Africa that has killed more than 1400 people.

Cameroon football federation President Joseph Owona said late on Wednesday he had asked the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to move next month's qualifier in Congo to "an Ebola-free venue".

"We are now waiting for their reaction and I'll also want to add that we're working with authorities in charge of Ebola prevention in Cameroon for instructions on how to proceed," Owona told AP. "It's a sufficiently delicate matter."

Cameroon's federation was doing "what we ought to do," Owona said, after the World Health Organisation was informed of the new outbreak in Congo.

CAF was already forced to move qualifiers out of Sierra Leone and Guinea, two of the worst-affected countries in the West African outbreak. CAF will reassess the situation in those nations in mid-September, but insisted games elsewhere should go ahead as planned. That might not be possible with governments overruling soccer bodies to prevent the spread of Ebola.

Owona said the Cameroon federation would follow its government's instructions over the trip to Congo's southern city of Lubumbashi should CAF refuse to move the game. Ivory Coast's government has told football authorities it will not allow Sierra Leone's team into the country for a game, also on September 6.

Republic of Congo doesn't want to travel to Nigeria, where Ebola has spread from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Liberia is not involved in the qualifiers.

CAF also received a complaint from Mali, who don't want to play a qualifier in Algeria after a Cameroonian player was hit and killed by an object thrown from the crowd in a league game last weekend.